1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related generally to document publishing systems and methods, and more particularly to such systems and methods that enable authors to submit abstracts, manuscripts, articles, and other text, graphics, and multimedia documents through computer networks in order to facilitate the substantially immediate review, editing and publishing of such documents.
2. Statement of the Invention
The submission, review, acceptance, and publication of documents, particularly written materials, is a lengthy and time-consuming process using the conventional procedures according to the prior art. The “World Wide Web” (more commonly referred to as the “Internet”) has dramatically decreased the time needed to communicate such documents to a publisher. However, there are still difficulties that are encountered in handling most forms of written material. The written materials, once submitted, must be centrally filed and managed through every step of approval between their initial submission and final publication. From an author's perspective, it would be easy to simply attach a document to an “e-mail”, and send that e-mail and document to a society for publication. However, it would still be difficult for the author to monitor the society's approval process. That process, too, would require the society to read, sort, and handle thousands of randomly formatted documents—a monumental task for any organization.
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a centralized system that avoids such problems is provided. Such a system enables an author to submit text, graphics, and multimedia documents to a second party through the Internet. Moreover, the system overcomes management problems by enabling a second party or “publishing authority” (e.g., a society, corporation, central organization, publisher, etc.) to easily process standardized materials, from receipt to publication, via the Internet.